The Second Battle of Bushwick [New York]
From the top of the spanking new steel-and-glass 14-story condo tower now open for inspection on Grove Street just off of Myrtle Avenue, you can see most of Bushwick—the landmarks of the neighborhood that was, and the one that’s fast being remade, the sites of the bad old memories, even of some of the good.
This is the Brooklyn neighborhood’s first major luxury residential construction project, but the marketers of the 59 condominium units for sale here steer clear of the name Bushwick as much as possible. Promotional materials aimed at luring hipsters with the means to buy a one-bedroom for $270,000, or a three-bedroom penthouse for $682,000 refer to “ever-expanding Williamsburg” or “East Williamsburg” as the building’s locale. This despite the fact that the tower at 358 Grove Street is in deepest Bushwick; look it up on any map.
“This is the continuation of Williamsburg,” insists the condo’s frantic real estate agent, dashing about the sixth-floor sales office. “Look,” he says, burbling the happy nonsense of a salesman, “people in the neighborhood are ready to take their lives to the next level.”
What’s at work here is straight out of the brokers’ handbook: Link the property in buyers’ minds to the worldwide cachet of that now-prosperous and booming neighborhood a couple miles west of here. “The Peter Luger Steakhouse is just a couple of blocks away,” the agent says, leaning over an unfinished rooftop cabana. Actually, Peter Luger’s is a solid eight subway stops away from here on the M train that rumbles along Myrtle Avenue. But no matter. There are some very solid marketing rationales for this approach.
